What Grabs Readers: The Inside Story

I ended my post last month with the fact that what readers are wired to respond to in a story – to wit: the protagonist’s escalating internal struggle — is not what writers have been taught to focus on. I was reminded of this recently when reading Jason Sheehan’s review of Lauren Groff’s literary bestseller, Fates and Furies on NPR’s Morning Edition website. By way of praising the book Sheehan called it . . .

“. . . a master class in best lines; a shining, rare example of that most unforgiving and brutal writer’s advice: All you have to do is write the best sentence you’ve ever written. Then 10,000 more of the best. Then find a way to string them together into the story of something.” (italics his)

When I read that, I had to take several deep cleansing breaths, lest my head explode and make a big mess all over the place. Are you kidding me? So it’s about learning to write the “best lines”? That’s the skill writers need to develop first and foremost? THEN they “find a way to string them together into “the story of something”? How could you even do that? The implication, of course, is that once you learn to write 10K pretty sentences, the story will somehow magically appear. That is if you have the rare thing that Groff has. In other words, talent. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

The sentences in a novel are there for one reason and one reason only: to convey the story. It is the story that makes those “best” sentences relevant and gives them their power. To be clear: we’re talking about the power to hijack the reader’s brain, push the pause button, and put the real world on hold while the story unfolds.

And yet, according to the writer’s advice Sheehan so reverently passed on, the story, the meaning, the purpose of those best sentences is an afterthought. Something you add only after you’ve written a slew of “best” sentences. And sheesh, what does “best” even mean in this context? Probably something to do with “love of language,” whatever that means. Which only makes the goal that much more elusive, that is to say vague, frustrating, unattainable.

Make no mistake: there is no “love of language” and there are no “best sentences” that do not include meaning. After all, language by itself is merely random sounds, because language is not a thing in itself. It’s a conduit. Here is Webster’s definition:

Language: the system of words or signs that people use to express thoughts and feelings to each other.

Language is a form of communication, a way of expressing meaning. And where does meaning come from? Context. Story. The point you’re making. Not, and I can’t say this strongly enough, from a random string of “best” sentences.

Story first, plot second, best sentences (optional) and last.

Okay. So the first question is, what is a story? Is it the plot, the things that happen in the story? Nope. The plot is external, and if you focus on the plot before you nail your story, then all you’ll have is a bunch of things that happen.

The story is about how the plot affects the protagonist. And not how the plot affects the protagonist on the surface – as in a rock falls on the protagonist and she says ouch — but about how it affects her beneath the surface. Story is about a changing internal landscape, not an external one.

On that score, I recently read a review in the New York Times of Becoming Nicole, a non-fiction narrative about a transgender girl, that neatly nailed what a story is, what the reader is mesmerized by, and therefore what writers need to know before they attempt to write even one best sentence. Here’s reviewer Jennifer Senior:

“Reading strictly for plot, Becoming Nicole is about a transgender girl who triumphed in a landmark discrimination case in 2014, successfully suing the Orono school district in Maine for barring her from using the girls’ bathroom. But the real movement in this book happens internally, in the back caverns of each family member’s heart and mind. Four ordinary and imperfect human beings had to reckon with an exceptional situation, and in so doing also became, in their own modest ways, exceptional.” (italics mine)

That is what we come to story for: the inner transformation of the protagonist. How does what happens in the plot transform an ordinary person into an exceptional one? In other words: how does what happens on the surface cause the protagonist to change internally?

You have to know a lot of specific backstory about your protagonist before you can begin to answer that question, let alone create a plot capable of spurring that change.

Because as it turns out not only was Shakespeare right that “what’s past is prologue,” but as Faulkner so brilliantly said, “the past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past.”

The past is alive, always, in how we make sense of the present. This is something your protagonist can’t do unless you know specifically about his or her past.

This isn’t “pre-writing,” because in addition to allowing you to craft a believable plot, the vast majority of what you’ll uncover about your protagonist’s past will be in the novel, beginning on the first page. That is, in the form of flashbacks, dialogue and the snippets of memory she calls up to decode the plot problem that kicks into gear on page one.

That knowledge – the backstory – is not only laced into the novel, it is precisely what the reader comes for. And, ironically, what writers are often warned not to do. “Don’t give us backstory,” writers are often told, “and while you’re at it, steer clear of flashbacks, and don’t spend much time telling us what your protagonist is thinking, either.” Worst advice ever! What that really means is: don’t do it poorly. Don’t give us an info dump, and don’t let your protagonist simply muse aimlessly over his or her life just because.

But don’t give us backstory? You have to, because backstory is what the protagonist uses to make sense of the hard choices he has to make right this very minute. It’s what he uses to gauge the meaning and consequence of what’s happening. It’s the basis for the decisions he makes and the action he takes. There is no story without backstory.

Want to see what I mean? Let’s turn to our writer in residence, Jennie Nash, who has been developing her new novel, tentatively titled Real Life With People, based on the steps I’ll be outlining in my new book, Story Genius.

The following is the second scene in Jennie’s novel. In the first scene we found out that the protagonist, Ruby, is a TV writer. On the eve of writing the last episode of their long-running series, Ruby’s writing partner and long time lover Henry was hit by a car while riding his bike. He and Ruby had just had a fight. He was ending their writing partnership. She was angry. He is not expected to survive the crash. Now, she has five days to write the final episode. But she’s a basket case. Her producer, Sharon, is threatening to allow a fangirl to write it, and her sister Nora is threatening to force Ruby to leave her house because she doesn’t think she can take care of herself. Ruby, however, is about to come up with a plan . . .

Notice the bolded sections: They’re places where we get insight into what any of this means to Ruby, and are privy to her inner struggle. Notice how often backstory crops up.

***

As soon as the sun came up, I showered and put on real clothes for the first time since the accident. I was waiting at Whole Foods when the store manager came to the door with her key to let in the early morning supplicants. I grabbed a cart and began to load it with organic spinach, rosemary sourdough bread, fresh garlic hummus and seasonally appropriate fruit. I went for the most expensive option of everything offered, and finally steered into the meat aisle, thinking I would get stuffed chicken breasts or a marinated roast – something with gravitas I could stick in the oven so that when Nora and the realtor arrived, the house would smell of someone taking care of themselves. I pulled my cart behind a woman with a small white dog tucked into a bag that was slung on her shoulder.

“A pound of the organic grass fed hamburger,” she said. The dog poked its head out and she began to murmur.

“That’s right, sweet Bruiser, Mama’s getting your favorite.”

I knew from my sister Nora how much some dogs were pampered, but I had never imagined anyone buying grass fed beef for their dog.

“It eats organic meat?” I asked.

“She absolutely refuses kibble,” the woman said, “and you can’t really blame her, can you? It’s packed with preservatives and added fillers and the meat they use to make that stuff – arghk.” She made a sound of disgust and scratched the dog behind its ears. “It’s the scraps from the slaughter house floors. It’s enough to turn your dog vegetarian.”

“Dogs can be vegetarian?” I asked – not because I doubted the answer, but because I wanted to hear this woman explain how the descendants of wolves could survive on tofu. It seemed suddenly important.

She laughed. “Of course! You just have to give them enzymes so they don’t have gas from all the fiber.” She took the package of meat the butcher handed her, cooed again to her dog, waved, and headed off toward the eggs. I supposed the dog liked scrambled eggs for breakfast.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” the butcher asked.

It took me a moment to realize he was speaking to me.

“Yes,” I said, and smiled to buy a little time.

I looked down the aisle after the woman with the dog, and something began to take shape in my mind. Sharon’s receptionist thought I should get a dog, and the woman who cut my hair, and the mailman who brought nothing but junk and bills. Nora had been suggesting I get a dog all my life – she, the veterinarian, for whom doglessness was evidence of everything that was wrong with my life. I had no husband, no family, no dog, and my entire ability to connect with the human race was therefore suspect. “You should get a dog!” It was the knee jerk reaction people gave to single women and middle aged women and depressed women and women in pain, and I was now, all of a sudden, all of those things.

If she thought I had a dog, Nora would stop worrying about me. If she thought I had a dog, she would leave me alone. I didn’t have to buy a dog, or adopt one. I just needed a dog for a few hours.

I turned to the butcher. “A pound of the grass fed hamburger, please.”

***

What actually happens on the surface in that scene? Ruby goes to the market, sees a woman buying fancy hamburger for her dog, learns a couple of surprising facts about what dogs eat, and then buys a pound of hamburger herself. That’s the surface what. And it’s boring. It’s just a bunch of things that happen.

But the scene isn’t boring. Aren’t you curious about why Ruby is buying that hamburger …. and a little worried that it might be illegal, misguided, the cause of even bigger problems for Ruby? Because as we all know, whatever the protagonist does to make things better will only make them worse. Especially in the beginning. Doesn’t it make you wonder what will happen next?

Your curiosity has very little to do with what happened externally, and everything to do with Ruby’s internal struggle. That’s what matters, and that’s what we’re wired to respond to. It’s why even something as seemingly mundane as a trip to Whole Foods on an early weekday morning can be exciting. Because everything is seen as a potential means to an end: how will this help Ruby solve her problem? That’s why it matters. Backstory drives story. The past drives the present.

In order to create the present and the subjective lens through which Ruby views it, Jennie had to know a lot about Ruby’s life. And Nora’s. And Sharon’s. And about Henry, Ruby’s writing partner. In fact, it took months of work before Jennie could write these pages. And it all began when Jennie first came up with an idea for a novel about grief, the cost of human connection, and a woman who doesn’t like dogs. Next month we’ll talk about the steps she took to get from there to here.

Till then, here’s a question that will help you drill down to your story’s core: If you had to pick one moment in your protagonist’s past that defined her before she stepped onto page one of your novel, what would it be?

My pleasure, Rebecca! Here’s my two cents — backstory (the memories the protag uses to figure out what the hell to do) is woven in in service of a hard decision she has to make right that very minute. So everything that goes to that stays. Thinking about things at her leisure, for no real story reason that the reader can see, goes. Hope that helps ;-)

A keeper post – excellent example of how to weave backstory into the fabric of the front story. This is done so badly so frequently that, as a reader, I cringe when I come across backstory and info dumping. . . yet done well, makes the entire scene soar in a new more interesting direction. Thank you and well done!

Thanks Lynn! You’re so right — the truth is, when backstory is woven in deftly, most of the time we don’t even realize it’s backstory. But it’s almost always there, from the first page onward.

Ditto, Jim — I will NEVER understand how people can say beware of backstory — it’s not only the warp and weft of story, it’s the warp and weft of life. It’s how we humans make sense of everything. It’s the lens through which we evaluate the world around us. Without it (think of backstory as your past) we’d all be walking around with amnesia. Sleep well!

*sigh* You have just defined what I believe is wrong with ‘literary’ fiction. Beautiful words strung together, often without motion, conflict, or apparent story-line. My question has to be, why do literary novels win all the major awards in fiction? Hmmm?

Thanks, Lisa. You’re Wired for Story book is spot on in outlining these points and I really appreciate you giving us an example from Jenni Nash’s narrative. Sometimes it helps to see the points actually put into action in a story. As someone who has to remind myself to add inner thoughts, I need to keep your voice in the back of my head as I’m writing. Plowing through plot is dead without we the writers adding in how the protagonist is thinking, feeling, putting the pieces together. It’s what connects the reader to the POV character and makes them care.

The visual of your head exploding made me spit out my coffee. There’s so much noise out there about how to write compelling fiction, but for me, a few voices cut through the din. Yours is one of them, Lisa. You make lights go on. “The past drives the present.” Wow. A deceptively simple statement. Weaving the past into the present, delving deep into a character’s head and heart, and doing it seamlessly, is no easy task. Jennie’s scene is a wonderful illustration of how powerful it is when done well. I’m anticipating a dog-snatching!! As a beginning writer, I didn’t understand how potent and necessary it was to go back and excavate the deep past of a character. Now I know that it’s the heartbeat of the story.

I’m writing the final chapters of my novel. When I asked myself, “What in my MC’s past defined her before the story starts,” it came to me all at once – loss of family. And then I realized, for the first time, that everything the MC does in the story is related to that. Thanks for helping me put it in words. That revelation will help me tweak my story.

Patterson doesn’t call himself a great writer, but a great storyteller. I can be thrown out of a book quickly if I have to read while performing mental gymnastics. Intrigue me with a relatable character and a few hooks and I’m in.

That deep understanding of the character? That’s what takes the time. If you can’t make your reader identify with your characters to the point of caring what happens, they won’t be interested in the story. For that you have to KNOW the character.

I’ve learned from the best: Donald Maass, Sol Stein, Albert Zuckerman. To take the reader on an emotional rollercoaster they can’t – and don’t want to – get off.

Everything else is decoration, and should be at least competent (which explains certain bestsellers accused of awkward writing); but without the story which makes the reader want to BE the character, it is all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

What I get from your post: Backstory is everything. And how we react to that backstory is the inner story? So, story lies in those two facets, the backstory and how we react to it (the inner story). Wow. Both on an individual scale and on a global one this makes sense… Do you remember a movie I think it was in the eighties called Flatliners? It was about a group of medical students experimenting with death. They would flatline for a few moments and then have their friends revive them. From their experiences while flatlined they came to the conclusion that everything you do matters. Everything. Because everything you do shapes a backstory that shapes the future somewhere in time. I’m going to go back and watch that movie again. Thanks for provoking my brain this morning, Lisa.

Lisa– I’ve said this before and will say it again: your posts are invariably useful and clear. Bravo for calling out those who dismiss the importance of antecedent action–that is, all the history that comes before a story begins. Without it, all the reader gets is a blizzard of “current events,” actions without weight or meaning. For me, the whole enterprise of writing is one of seeking to invest experience with meaning, and it demands paying less attention to the notion of “intrinsic interest.” For instance–speaking only for myself–I’ve become skeptical of stories that traffic in melodrama: stories that badger the reader into feeling more than events deserve. But as you say, what could be less gripping, less intrinsically interesting than a trip to Whole Foods? Only if the reader is ready to share a character’s inner response to the experience can the scene you quote “mean.” The challenge is to discover ways of informing readers of backstory without their noticing it’s being done. And that’s a real challenge. Your post leads me to say something about the ignorant book critic you take to task for over-weighting the sentence, when story is so much more important. One of the commenters above says the critic’s view illustrates for her what’s “wrong with ‘literary’ fiction.” It’s really time for genre writers to stop treating “literary” fiction as the enemy. Writers who by choice produce what’s known as “fine writing” are writing–almost always–for a small audience that admires beautifully crafted sentences. That’s fine with me, and I feel no need to denounce such writing. But I will also say this, and I say it as a genre suspense writer: when I “look inside” a book at Amazon, unless the writer is paying attention to sentences, unless s/he is avoiding clichés, I don’t care what kind of story the book promises to tell. In fact, subject matter related to grief, loss, abandonment, suffering, etc often reflects these problems. That is obviously not true of your disciple, Jennie Nash.

Confusion totally justified — I am both! I coach Lisa in her non fiction book development, and in Story Genius, I talk my book through her fiction development process. She learns from me, I learn from her — it’s a circle of awesome if you ask me ;)

Excellent post. Storytelling involves so many elements properly balanced for each unique story. I think Lisa overstates the value of backstory by handing it primacy. In THIS story it may be perfectly so, but in THAT story perfectly awful. However, no well told story can do without it.

As to frank melodrama, it is best, if/once introduced, to mute it and move on to the real story.

That book critic should be sentenced to re-read Proust for the rest of his life.

I think perhaps these terms are better approached in a fluid, analog manner. The story-past cannot be ignored. But you don’t have to be held hostage to a cut-and-paste method for prior events. Far too artificial. The past blends with the present, sometimes well, often not. There is great promise in not. A useful motive for a story can be a false memory that is traumatic. Or ordinary. Or uncannily both. Blend from error. Nobody’s perfect.

As the writer of that scene, I’m curious — is it because you already know the answer or because you don’t care? I’m not asking that in a mean way or to point a finger but because it would actually be very helpful for me to know. And if it’s “don’t care,” is it because this type of story/character isn’t your cup of tea or because the scene hasn’t done the job of making you care?

Hi Lance, I remember your great story the UnConference, hard to believe that was almost exactly a year ago! Great question, and you’ve given me the topic for next month’s column. To be very clear: I am not talking about general backstory — as in a general description of everything that happened in the past (the protagonist’s or anyone’s) but VERY SPECIFIC turning point moments in your protagonist’s past. That is, moments (think full fledged scenes) that are specific to the story you’re telling (i.e. to the protagonist’s inner struggle, which is what the story is actually about). The same is true of some secondary characters (depends on their role). It’s too much to go into here, but expect next month’s post to be a very clear definition of what backstory actually is, and how to determine what it is you need to know about your specific protagonist, in light of the story you’re telling and the point you’re making. Thanks again for the question. Now I have one for you: what’s a NPC?

It’s always my pleasure. I’m wondering, I suppose, how interesting characters tend to grow out of side characters. Some of the best books I know happened because an author had a better emotional impetus for a side character than the protagonist and decided to write from the side character’s perspective instead.

Non-Playable Character. They tend to be characters in videogames like Morrowind or D&D that are as crucial to the plot as “the shot heard round the world” or the bear trap in The Edge but they happen to be humans.

And then sometimes, an NPC will actually turn out to be crucial to the plot. Potentially even characters as annoying as Jar Jar Binks.

I remember once hearing James Patterson say: I became a writer when I stopped writing sentences and started writing stories. (Then I picked up one of his books, read a few pages, and thought: Wow. He really DID stop writing sentences.)

I agree with Barry that the literary-vs-genre brouhaha is a waste of breath.

Though I too agree that backstory is crucial to character, for all the reasons who’ve spelled out so succinctly — “backstory is behavior” is how I put it these days — I was taken by an observation Steven James makes in STORY TRUMPS STRUCTURE. (I know I refer to this book with almost tedious regularity, but it really is excellent. Forward by Donald Maass!)

The observation: If you want to inspire empathy for your character, emphasize their internal struggles and interpersonal relationships.

However, if you want to inspire admiration for the character — i.e., admiration on the basis of how he handles adversity — then emphasize external struggles.

The point: there are indeed some characters for whom backstory is less important than others: Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Jack Reacher. These characters have much more of an archetypal appeal, and readers don’t respond to them as they would a character meant to resemble a real human being.

It’s a question of degree, of course. We know Poirot has had a long career as “the greatest detective in Europe,” and his fussy manners and dress reveal his past. Reacher was a homicide detective in the military police downsized with the “peace dividend,” but otherwise he’s the plains drifter, the samurai, the knight errant, and readers know instinctively how to respond to him.

I’ll end with this quote from James Merrill’s poem, “The Book of Ephraim”:

I yearned for the kind of unseasoned telling found In legends, fairy tales, a tone licked clean Over the centuries by mild old tongues, Grandam to cubs, serene, anonymous… My characters, conventional stock figures Afflicted to a minimal degree With personality and past experience — A witch, a hermit, innocent young lovers, The kinds of being we recall from Grimm, Jung, Verdi, and the commedia dell’arte.

The past driving the present, I love this! I’m writing a novel that has 7 point of view characters, and, being part of Jennie’s Author Accelerator, I made sure to focus on a central protagonist. (Jennie did not give me a choice — which I’m so grateful for, because wow did it ever give my novel a backbone.)

That said, I wanted to make sure every character had narrative drive, so I had to really develop that back story and key moment from the past that’s creating an obstacle in the present and which each character has to overcome in order to change how they think about themselves and the world. I even did this for some NPC’s (borrowing Lance’s abbreviation for non-POV characters), but only if their motives and involvement in the overall plot was integral enough that I needed to make sure they have that third dimension, even if we don’t see right into their head.

One other thing that struck me from your post, and it has to do with the idea of adding 10,000 great sentences to the first one. I like how you illustrate that it’s not about each sentence being a contrived, literary wonder, but about each one connecting to the story’s heart (that idea of past driving the present). When I write, the sentence is the heartbeat of scene. I can tell when the sentences I’m writing are wrong because with that sentence, the story’s heart stopped. I can only write so long before I can feel things turning blue — deleting happens then. But the point of bringing this up is that I’ve learned (as you demonstrate above), that what makes for a great sentence is not poetic and literary brilliance (unless you’re writing poetry), but story relevance. The sentence connects. The story breathes. The present evolves, toward change and discovery of meaning and insight.

You totally made my day with this honest – AND competent clarification; I hear so much advice these days about concocting the perfect phrase, constructing the perfect language, that I started to feel terrorized. “And my story, the one that doesn’t allow me to live my life until it gets to be put out there, what about it?? This doesn’t matter?” I’m not exaggerating, it’s kind of paralyzing, it cuts the wind in my sails, as English is not my native language – no way I could ever measure up to the standards of a native, crafty writer.

But then, you just reminded me: we are “wired for stories”, and this is something I know but very well, this is how my students and how I respond; it is the content rather than the wrapping what matters, and if one can master them both, it’s all for the better.

Years ago, the “writing stars” in my own culture used to publish one book after another in what would be our equivalent for the language flurry that you mention in the beginning – they were almost godly in status, as upheld by the academia of that time. Needless to say, ten years on nobody cared for their writings; twenty years now already, who remembers they ever existed??

more than just a keeper, Lisa, i’ll be printing the following and putting it on my wall:

“Reading strictly for plot, Becoming Nicole is about a transgender girl who triumphed in a landmark discrimination case in 2014, successfully suing the Orono school district in Maine for barring her from using the girls’ bathroom. But the real movement in this book happens internally, in the back caverns of each family member’s heart and mind. Four ordinary and imperfect human beings had to reckon with an exceptional situation, and in so doing also became, in their own modest ways, exceptional.” (italics mine)

Spot On! Some of this is so obvious I want to smack my forehead for not realizing it. I really appreciate explaining the difference between story and plot, so often teachers and writers lump those together. They truly are different story elements. Thank you also for explaining the importance of backstory to all that goes on inside a character. It’s no different for us as people. The better we’re in tune to our own past the better we can understand why we do what we do. Why wouldn’t it be any different for our characters?

Thank you so much for this, Lisa. It is tremendously helpful for both fiction and memoir. The backstory of a person’s life affects her decisions moving forward in the slice of life she recounts in the memoir. Backstory moves her to action. And the protagonist in memoir changes because of the decisions made in the memoir. She becomes a different person because of the inner struggle shown throughout memoir.

Although I’m fond of Jennie’s Ruby – the dog food scene IS involving & amusing if not strictly compelling, I can’t agree that this kind of passage is what every reader “precisely comes for”. At least not primarily.

There are many kinds of stories and many kinds of readers. Fans of military SciFi have about zero interest in backstory. Certainly not any very personal backstory. They just want advanced war & gore, kind of like the multi-billion $$$ Gamergaters. The subgenre is very successful, I’m sorry to report.

Mystery readers of all stripe are generally uninterested in backstory unless it serves the who-done-it motive, by way of revelation or obfuscation. Also a very successful and this time, primary genre. Precious few Mysteries are written with whole, full character first in mind. Melodramatic, stunted character, you bet.

And so on.

Having said that, THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN is perhaps the Prince of backstory, by way of being historical fiction, metafiction, and, always present – exhibiting character motivation par excellence. The backstory of the main character is, along with the Lieutenant’s desire, the driving primary force of the narrative. It is also literary fiction, and nominally a science fiction. Any sensible reader will be… seduced.

I think the position you take is considerable. Other authors place POV as the most important element or tool in the writer’s satchel. I know of at least one who professes Aristotle’s Unity-of-Action above all.

Thank you for this reminder. I have always said “story is first and foremost.” But I know a couple people (so 2 out of 100 or 2%) who swear the writing is most important. Whenever I try to read this (older) literature (written MOSTLY by wealthy women), I keep thinking “When is SOMETHING going to happen?” Sure, there are those who like that kind of writing, but they have plenty of places to find it. Your point about backstory is also excellent but I think you had another post recently just about backstory. This is exactly why we most take people’s advice with a grain of salt! Sherrie Sherrie Miranda’s historically based, coming of age, Adventure novel “Secrets & Lies in El Salvador” is about an American girl in war-torn El Salvador:http://tinyurl.com/klxbt4y Her husband made a video for her novel. He wrote the song too: